"The Israel Lobby Swims The Atlantic" Grant Smith

 "Israel’s massive, clandestine nuclear arsenal remains a thorn in the side of U.S. nonproliferation efforts. Building it required many unfriendly acts, such as materials theft and covert financing from U.S. donors. The Israeli nuclear arsenal story remains curiously under-reported in America, though not throughout the rest of the world. But have media outlets such as The Atlantic received assistance from Israel and its lobby for publishing helpful – but equally misleading – content?

The unqualified answer is yes.

In the early 1960s the AZC’s Magazine Committee [.pdf] met regularly with writers to prepare articles for top U.S. magazines such as Reader’s Digest, the Saturday Evening Post, and Life. In its program [.pdf] for “cultivation of editors” and “stimulation and placement of suitable articles in the major consumer magazines,” the committee pushed lighter subjects with prepared texts such as the thirteenth anniversary of Israel’s founding while killing investigative pieces at such publications as the Christian Science Monitor. The committee confronted two major news items challenging Israel: fallout from the “Lavon Affair” (a cover-up of failed false-flag Israeli terrorist attackson U.S. government facilities in Egypt) and American peace proposals calling for the return of some expelled Palestinian refugees to their homes and property in Israel. The Israeli government and its U.S. lobby invested heavily in arguing against the return of Palestinian refugees through The Atlantic, according to yet another secret AZC report[.pdf]:"  Grant Smith

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I am going to abstain from commenting on this.   At some point I am going to write about the level of infiltration and "placement" in the executive branch, but not today.  pl

http://original.antiwar.com/smith-grant/2010/08/17/the-israel-lobby-swims-the-atlantic/

Comments

[William R. Cumming]

I think the most interesting thing about the MSM is they rarely self-disclose how they are funded or make money. For example, WAPO has spent most of the last two decades exploiting students wishing to better themselves by its testing and classes. I believe the term "bloodsucker" is not inappropriate. Is there a major MSM corporation that does not exploit ignorance in some fashion?

[matt]

Curious to see if James Fallows, Ta-Nahesi Coates, Sullivan, Ambinder, et. al. will blog about this on any of their respective blogs .... They Should.

[JohnH]

I think it's Ray McGovern who calls them the fawning corporate media.

I can't want for a flood stories to emerge about the total corruption of our most important sources of "information." Sadly, I'm afraid I'll be waiting a long, long time for I can't imagine how the news will get out.

[Info]

A short author interview. NPR has, so far, turned the story down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kureFeGmoDI&feature=player_embedded

[samuelburke]

Col Lang, the level of infiltration and placement in the executive branch, as you say, needs to be brought to light, the free press sure as hell isn't doing anything to help redirect the ship of state.

if the press doesn't do it who will?

[Patrick Lang]

Anonymous

Patton? What is it that you think he knew that he was going to tell? That he had been fooling around with his wife's niece since she was about 16?

Your remark would be vaguely threatening except that it comes from Sao Paulo.

My post on infiltration is already written and in a vault to be published... pl

[confusedponderer]

As for NUMEC,
I read in Seymour Hersh's The Samson Option that the disappeared material likely seeped into the bulding structure and concrete floors, and was apparently not smuggled.

According to Hersh, after NUMEC's plant was eventually decontaminated in 1989, at least a hundred kilograms of Uranium were extracted from highly contaminated walls and floors (p.256, 257).

I can't tell if that is true, but it is plausible.

[Hannah K. O'Luthon]

Thanks for the AZC .pdf files. Such documentation is precious, and AFAIK there's precious little of it "in the public domain".

[William R. Cumming]

Whatever his faults it is clear that Patton's intuition after a lifetime of experience and education drove his decision to swing his forces early to cut off the Bulge in December 1944. This saved many US lives and destroyed many German lives. But it also shortened the war unlike Monty's bridge too far. None of US are perfect.

[sonic]

Patton died in an otherwise inconsequential car crash (no other passengers were injured)

Hardly the method of choice for state assassins.

[Phil Giraldi]

Colonel Lang, I call your readers' attention to a piece I just did over at The American Conservative about a resurgence of Mossad activity in the US, including possible threats against a USS Liberty survivor.

http://www.amconmag.com/blog/mossad-in-america/

[Info]

RE: NUMEC Diversion

A twenty-year-old Hersh book isn't the best place for current info on this story.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in March 2010 published the analysis of two former NRC officials who confirmed that not only are 337 KG of HEU still categorized as missing, but that NUMEC was the highest loss facility in the entire country. (Revisiting the NUMEC Affair)

In 2009 Arlen Specter pressed the NRC to exonerate NUMEC president Shapiro of diversion to Israel, but they wouldn't do it. (Google NUMEC and Specter, all of the sordid documents are on the net)

An event at the International Spy Museum in July covered Israeli nuclear diversion and espionage and NUMEC. Unedited video is at the Internet Archive, search "Israel's Nuclear Arsenal: Espionage, Opacity and Future."

[confusedponderer]

Info,
something that is twenty years old isn't necessarily wrong. But as I said, I can't tell if Hersh's info is correct. It is certainly worth considering.

It is conceivable that both is the case - contamination and diversion. That isn't mutually exclusive.